CardioExchange, an NEJM practice community for medical professionals dedicated to improving cardiac patient care, was active from 2009 to 2015. CardioExchange fostered discussion between clinicians from across the globe.

August 18th, 2014

CardioExchange’s Harlan M. Krumholz interviews Sidney C. Smith, coauthor of a new article, published in JACC, that reviews the major findings and recommendations of the 2013 cholesterol guidelines, as well as the recommendations’ implications for risk assessment, LDL lowering, and statin use. Krumholz: How have the new guidelines changed your practice? Smith: The new focus on statins, […]

July 31st, 2014

CRISPR is a new technique for inactivating or editing specific genes. Developed in microorganisms, it also works in mammalian cells, including in vitro human cells and monkey embryos. About 10 years ago, a gene was identified that is critical to production of the LDL cholesterol receptor (LDL-R): PCSK9. Naturally occurring human mutations that enhance the effect […]

November 7th, 2013

The FDA said today that it would begin to take efforts to remove trans fat from food in the U.S. The agency has made the “preliminary determination that partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs), the primary dietary source of artificial trans fat in processed foods, are not ‘generally recognized as safe’ for use in food.” If the FDA’s preliminary determination is made final then manufacturers […]

April 29th, 2013

Using an unconventional mathematical approach, a group of Japanese researchers say there may be no good reason to reduce LDL cholesterol more than 40 mg/dl. Their research letter has been published online in JAMA Internal Medicine. According to the authors, members of the ALICE (All-Literature Investigation of Cardiovascular Evidence) Group, most meta-analyses use linear models that […]

February 21st, 2013

The recent introduction of two drugs specifically targeted to treat people with the rare but dangerous condition of homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) has caused increased interest in figuring out the best strategy to identify people with the disorder. Now a new study published online in the Lancet suggests that one of the main screening plans that relies on genetic […]